And thus the Impulse Engine was born.
Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual indicates that the impulse engines are nuclear fusion engines where the plasma from the fusion reactor powers a massive magnetic coil to propel the ship.
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True story here. My brother was reading the specs on an experiment his son was doing in his graduate program in rocket engineering. The experiment was designed to re-purpose a device meant to create electromagnetic waves into a device that creates a big electromagnetic funnel to funnel ions in space in one end of a device and spit them out the other.
My brother told his son. “Wait a minute. You could turn this into thrust to make an engine. I saw this in science fiction a couple decades back.”
“Yup.” Said his son.
When I heard this story over Christmas I told my brother he had some serious bragging rights. His son was doing some interesting work as well.
private space companies can own the solar system if this technology is really feasible
Cool story.
Thanks for sharing.